Armored
by FloridaMagpie
Summary: A power-armored knight takes on a quest to save a child, and finds more than she bargained for. So due to popular demand - thanks for all the PMs and reviews, guys - this is no longer a one-shot. Let's see where it goes, shall we?
1. Chapter 1

The sun comes up, and finds me walking. Months ago, right after I climbed out of the vault for the first time and followed my father into the wastes, I tried travelling at night for a while. The sky seemed too wide, the world too big by daylight; I constantly felt I was going to fall off into the blue, a lost little speck in all the immensity around me. Growing up in an artificial cave gives you no comprehension of the scale of the world, no yardstick to judge distance and solidity, and the result is a nearly paralyzing fear of open spaces. For days I tried moving about at night, when the sky was black and the world shrunk down to the manageable little globe of light thrown by my pip-boy.

A few near-fatal encounters with raiders, molerats, and one memorable close-up meeting with a yao-guai taught me that blundering around in the dark wasn't a good idea, especially when you're wearing a glowing "come eat me" beacon on your wrist. So like everyone else eking out a life in the wastes, I learned the basic rhythms of survival. Move in daylight when visibility and footing are good and you can see trouble coming a long way off, then hole up at night, preferably somewhere up off of the ground or down in a hole, and keep quiet and still 'till daybreak.

And that's how I lived until my father died and Elder Lyons and the Brotherhood of Steel took an interest in my welfare. Paladin Gunny showed me how to use an old secondhand T-51d power armor harness Sarah Lyons scrounged up for me, taught me to make small precise movements, and let the sensors and servos of the steel exoskeleton do the work. I used it for three months, 'till I cut a deal with some Brotherhood Outcasts and traded a complicated and messy favor for access to a big pre-war tech cache. Right in the middle of it stood an ancient but perfectly preserved harness of T-51b that I got up and running just in time to save my life when a disagreement among my employers became a mutiny and subsequently a three-way bloodbath. I got out alive. Nobody else did.

Once you learn to wear power armor, to maintain and repair it, your whole world changes. The average harness of T-51b adds a foot to your height, a hundred and fifty pounds to your weight, and makes you as strong as a super mutant. Since you can't really be unobtrusive or quiet in that rig, you have to adapt again. Now the goal isn't invisibility, but preemption. Thermal and night vision systems make turn night into day and let you see through walls. The alloy steel exoskeleton makes you immune to most small-arms fire, from .32 and 10 mm all the way up to 5.56 mm and .308. The only things you really have to worry about when suited up are high explosives, energy weapons, and rust spots. Not a lot of the first two out here in the wastes most days, and on the rare occasions when rain falls you've usually got less to fear from the water itself than from the radioactive particles floating around in it.

So now I walk the nights, basking in the lambent green glow of night vision or the lurid reds and blues of thermal mode. The wastes are surprisingly beautiful seen through the eyes of technology. Night vision brings out the details of rubble and ruin with exquisite detail, wiping away the centuries of dust and grime and laying bare the bones of the old world in shining broken perfection. With the thermal overlay engaged, the world resolves itself into a map of relative warmth and cold. The dull orange of a crumbling pre-war roadway, still radiating the heat of the day, the deep blue of shade and water, and once in a while, the shifting blob of something alive, far out in the darkness. In between the enhanced vision and the constant racket of the servos and steel boots pounding concrete, most of what you see is already running away from you, which, given the nature of the wasteland, is usually a good thing.

Once in a while, you meet something too big, too tough, or too stupid to run, and then the steel skin you wear really comes into its own. An integrated targeting and tracking system throws tactical information up onto the suit's internal display, calculating threat assessments, suggesting loadouts, even throwing a calculated lead indicator up to increase your chances of hitting a moving target. In my time in the wastes, I've seen many things that have made me wonder if the ancients of the old world were completely insane, but this machine is pure, beautiful sanity, the perfect crystallization of the peak offensive and defensive technologies of the lost world of wonders.

Right now I'm looking for a place to hole up for the day, clean the dust out of the joints in the suit, and get a few hours of sleep. I'll reach Megaton tomorrow, and there'll be a bath waiting for me, and cooked food, and a real workbench with the spare parts to do a full maintenance workup. I've been a week on the trail, following up a lead on the location of some enclave holdouts, and I'm looking forward to some downtime. There's a crumbled overpass up ahead, huge sections of highway fallen to the ground while here and there concrete pillars support a stretch of concrete and rebar, like the canopy of a ragged masonry tree. I head for the nearest standing piece of shattered freeway, where a fallen section leans up against the giant pillars, creating a dark and shady space beneath. Of course, a spot like this is likely to attract more than just animals, so I go in with my assault rifle at the ready, selector switch on full-auto.

Inside, I find a little piece of hell. Bodies lie strewn about the small space, dismembered and mutilated. Looks like three, maybe four adults, and a sad, small bundle of clothes in the corner that makes my gut clench and churn with rage. The remains of a couch, now shredded by bullets and knives, a couple of chairs, and a table tells me that someone made a home here before the raiders came. There's no rest for me here, not among the dead, but as I turn to go, I hear a bubbly choking rasp from behind me. In a moment, I'm moving from body to body, looking for signs of life. Finally, one broken form in the corner stirs enough for me to notice. I trot over, armored boots squishing and crunching over clothes, broken chairs, and other things better left unexamined. The woman's face is a swollen mess of blood, and I can tell from the color of her skin, pale like milk, that I'm too late. All the stimpaks in the world can't replace one drop of blood, and it's clear she's lost far too much already. I'm AB+, so the odds she can use my blood are tiny. I'm just thinking about trying anyway, when one battered hand reaches up, touches the steel sheathing my forearm. Her lips move, but no sound comes out. I crank the audio amplification to max and lean down to listen.

"...Knight," she says. She thinks I'm Brotherhood. Technically, I suppose she's right. I lean down further. Even with the audio pickups at max, I can barely hear her. And then I hear the word that makes my blood run cold.

"...baby," she says. Her hand moves, pointing at the door. I look over at the bundle in the corner, but how can I tell her it's too late? Her eyes follow the inclination of my helmet, and she looks, then shakes her head, ever so slightly.

"...not... her."

A weak, bloody hand flutters up, lies for a moment on my armored gauntlet.

"...please..." she says, and she's gone.

I walk over to the bundle, and see that it's just a bundle of clothes. The pain in my chest subsides, just a bit, and then flares into rage as I realize what she meant. The raiders that did this have taken her child. An infant girl, from the sound of it. I can't save this woman, but damned if these monsters will have her baby.

On my feet now, systematically checking the bodies. I've done this a thousand times, I know the places people hide valuables: a stimpack, or a pile of caps, or an ancient, battered pack of cigarettes. Out here, looting the dead is an issue of survival, not morality. She'd do the same to me, were our situations reversed, and I'd be glad of it. Better another wastelander make use of my stuff then have it broken or sold or traded away by some raider scum for booze or chems. They don't have much; a few caps, some rusty broken firearms, a small stash of 10 millimeter rounds, and a single stimpak hidden under a box, carefully saved for an emergency that, when it came, was far too swift and complete for one lonely relic of the lost world of medical miracles to make any difference.

I stop to close her eyes before I leave the abattoir that was once a home. Outside, the sun is rising in the sky, and in the light of early morning, I can see that someone got a shot off before the raiders rolled over them. A small blood trail leads off to the west. I flick on infrared, and see that the blood is absorbing sunlight faster than the ground around it, making it glow pink, just a bit. I know I can work with that, and now I'm in pursuit, power armor driving me in long bounds from one glimmering breadcrumb to another. Soon the sun is too high, the ground too warm for the infrared to detect the difference between blood and dirt, but I don't need it anymore. I've got a bearing, and I know where they're going. Evergreen Mills. It's the worst place in the wasteland, a den of thieves, killers, rapists, and bandits, a dark, crumbling factory complex where the worst human monsters of the wastes gather to trade their loot for caps, booze, whores, and chems. I know where I'm going now, and my strides lengthen again, driving the servos to full capacity, taking ten yards at a bound.

Halfway there, I find the source of the blood trail. The old raider is lying in a cleft rock where there's a little shade, a nuka-cola bottle half full of water next to his hand. He's breathing in short, panting breaths. He reaches for an old 10 mm pistol as soon as he sees me, but it's far too late and I add a crushed hand to his list of injuries. After a little work, he confirms what I already know. I don't need to kill him - I can just let the sun and the blood loss finish him slowly, but I'm feeling merciful. I'm not going waste any ammo on him - I've got the steel ball of an old trailer hitch welded to the plates covering my forearm, and one quick strike with my elbow caves in his skull and closes his pale, angry eyes forever.

After an hour, I know they're too far ahead and I won't catch them before they reach their destination, so now it's time to think, and to regret stopping to deal with the wounded raider. There's a lot of raiders at the Mills, but I've got a hate on, good and hot, and I'm not letting them have one more victim today, especially not one this small and helpless. I've got a few tricks up my sleeve, but I don't know what I'm up against, so I'll have to play this one by ear. By late morning, I'm perched on a rocky cliff overlooking the Mills. I've just missed them, I realize and suppress another twinge of regret. Far below, a string of junk clad figures is making their way into the entrance. This time of day, there's not much else stirring. In my experience, Raiders don't typically wake before noon if they can help it.

I engage the digital magnification on the suit, push it to max. I have to lock all the servos in the suit to hold me still enough that the image doesn't judder wildly out of control. The second to last raider in line is holding a small bundle, and my magnified vision shows me a chubby arm waving, for just a moment. They're inside - no rush now. I take ten minutes, come up with a plan that might work. I've been here before, so I already know what to look for. Send a monster to kill a monster, they say, and these egotistical fools have already given me one of the greatest monsters in the waste to work with. Anybody stupid and cruel enough to cage and torture a super-mutant behemoth behind an electric fence probably deserves what's coming to them.

Moving quickly, I work my way around until I have a clear line of sight to the gate of the electrified cage where the super mutant lies asleep. From here, I can also see down into the courtyard in front of the main entrance. My enhanced vision shows me two guards, one sleeping at an old school desk, the other leaning against a fencepost, cleaning his nails with a wicked-looking combat knife. Dropping down behind a rock, I unhook my pack from the steel carabiners welded to the torso of my armor and bring it around in front of me. The battered ancient black plastic case takes up a full third of the space in the main pocket, but it's worth lugging the weight and the bulk for times like this. Inside are pieces of oiled steel and polymer, oiled and shining.

Five minutes of work assembles the jumble of unrecognizable shapes into the sleek deadly form of a .308 sniper rifle. I snap the 4x24 optical scope into place, and sprawl out on top of a large flat boulder, extending the two legs of the bipod and resting them on the flat warm table of rock in front of me. I check my ranges with the suit's laser rangefinder. Readout says 825 meters to the first guard, 827 to the second, and a mere 680 to the steel box in front of the gate to the mutant's prison. The day is dead calm, and I say a little prayer of thanks to whoever's listening that I don't have to deal with windage on a shot this long. I read an article in an old copy of Guns and Ammo on calculating windage by estimating wind direction at different reference points between you and the target, but even my vault-tec issued education isn't up to doing trigonometry in my head. Elevation's no problem, though. Three clicks down on the elevation wheel puts me at 700 meters, which means I'll have to hold low on the generator and high on the two guards. Can't be helped. This weapon is loud, and I'm going to have to get off two shots real quick. I can take a few more seconds on the third, and by then the noise will work to my advantage.

I set my scope on the marginally more alert of the two guards. His eyes are open, anyway so I figure he's more likely to cause problems. I settle the crosshairs over the bridge of his nose. That'll put the bullet more or less at his center of mass, and with this weapon, and the jury rigged armor he's wearing, that should do the job just fine. I check the second guard. He hasn't moved, but the slump he's in tells me I need to hold the aimpoint half a dot over his head to get him cleanly. I track back and forth a couple of times to get used to the shift, then I take a deep breath, lock up the servos of the suit, exhale, and squeeze. The report comes as a surprise, which is always a good sign when it comes to trigger control.

Now I have to move fast - unlock the servos, track smoothly to the other guard. I know the first bullet should be hitting the first guard just as I settle the crosshairs on the fencepost a few inches above the head of the second. He stirs, but I know the sound of the gunshot is still somewhere in the air between me and him. Just as I stroke the trigger, his eyes pop open, and I know he's heard the first round. It doesn't matter at this point, so I take the extra second to watch him reach up to rub his eyes, and I'm looking right at him as the round goes home, shearing through his upraised arm and punching through his chest in a puff of dust and a gout of red. The links of the fence behind him suddenly glisten crimson in the sunlight, and he and the chair go over backwards together. I can see his boots kicking, but I figure it doesn't matter whether the kill is clean or not, because he won't be able to stop what's coming next. The procedure is nearly automatic, now. Unlock, reposition, set the crosshairs in the dirt just below the steel box of the generator, and squeeze. The box blows up in a shower of sparks, and the blue glow on the fence dies.

The supermutant is already on his feet, staring at the gate. Now I've got to make him mad. Shouldn't be hard. I put a round high up into his shoulder, aiming for his armpit. A mutie this big, that's not likely to impair his combat effectiveness, but it'll sure piss him off. His mouth gapes open as he roars his rage and defiance to the still concrete walls.

That should do it. I unlock my servos and back out of the scope, take the opportunity to replace the five-round box magazine in the rifle. Round number six is already snug in the chamber, so I'm ready to go once the party gets going. The effect I'm looking for will take a few minutes to develop - no hurry now. I pull a handful of loose .308 rounds out of my pack, reload the first magazine with five fresh glittering doses of murder.

By the time I'm done, the anthill is well and truly kicked over. Raiders are boiling out of the main entrance and onto the catwalks on the second floor. Crew bosses are barking orders, trying to get their sleepy, hung-over killers organized and into the fight. The super mutant is pounding on the door to his cage, and as I watch, the crossbar finally pops free, and ten tons of raging monster is loose among the wolves. The're not going to be worrying about anything else right now, so I leave the rifle where it lies, and scoop up the chinese-made assault rifle I use for day-to-day work. Moving fast, I bound along the ridge. Time for the scary part now. I lean out over the roof of the factory complex, say another prayer, and jump. Falling this far, you have time to think about what a bad idea this is before you hit.

When you're falling without armor, the best thing to do is bend your knees, roll into a ball, and hope for the best. In armor, it's just the opposite. You're harder than most anything else out there, and your servos, not your shell, are the weak point, so you lock your knees and let the titanium steel alloy and the shock buffers take the impact. The screen flickers inside the helmet when I hit, but only for a second. I unlock the servos and as the dust clears I realize I'm sunk like a lawn dart waist-deep through the roof of the small prefab building module I've hit. Holding the rifle in my left hand, I do a quick visual inspection. It looks intact, so I reach down with my right hand and rip pieces out of the roof until it lets go of me and I drop down into the dark interior.

Night vision comes up automatically, and I settle the rifle into my shoulder and start my sweep. The next room is a sleeping chamber, full of chaos and stumbling bodies, two or three of them small. I'm careful, and only now I realize I haven't thought this through. How many babies might be here? How many small children? I have no idea how I'll find her, or even what I'll do with her once I do. Too late to go back now, I've got to see this through. I stalk from room to room, scanning for armed figures. The suit does a lot of the work, highlighting weapons and painting crosshairs on the heads and chests of those holding them. It's bloody work, and there's no way to be sure I'm not killing noncombatants, but I don't have time to stop and interview them, so everything with a gun gets two to the center of mass before I ruck over them and move on. A lot of the bodies I see moving around are wearing slave collars, so I start using that as a non-threat indicator as well. After a while, my brain goes quiet and my body switches to autopilot, and when I look up, I've reached the front door.

Outside, the battle is still raging. I don't think that even working together the raiders can bring the hulking monster down, but I can't let either side win, or I lose. There's a raider with a rocket launcher up on one of the catwalks, and as I watch there's a sizzling shriek like tearing rubber and a smoke trail reaches out and touches the behemoth. The earth shakes, and even the monster knows it's hurt. As the smoke clears, I can see white ribs and something pulsing and pink beneath the torn green skin. The raider is showing white teeth in a feral grin as she loads another round. I wait, let her get one more off before I hit her from below, three rounds stitching up her torso, the last one going home under her chin. There's a fine pink mist as it blows up through the top of her head, and she drops like a broken doll. The mutant is staggering, now, and the raiders move in for the kill. As focused as they are on the dying behemoth, they're not watching for me, and I get three more before one of them spots me. They're down to half a dozen now, and they're low on ammo, so it's hardly a fight at all, and soon I'm standing alone on the sun-baked tarmac while blood dries on the asphalt as the flies buzz and crows and turkey buzzards gather above me.

The behemoth lies out in the middle of the courtyard, oozing blood down the pile of concrete and rebar he's fallen across. His chest is still moving in great, shuddering breaths, but I know it's not long now. I walk over to him, and I whisper to the tortured soul inside the beast that it's time to rest, that he's done a good thing today. I tell him about the baby, and his mother. The eyes blink, and I think I see a spark of understanding in them, just for a moment, before they close for good.

I've got maybe a hundred women and children inside the hulking factory behind me, and if I'm honest, I know I've got no idea what I'm going to do with them. In a minute, I'm going to have to go back in there to look for the baby I came for and face the rest of the carnage I've wrought. I know I don't want to see it, but I made a promise this morning to a dying woman, and the consequences of that have grown beyond what I expected. I won't leave that baby to grow up in this place, and I can't abandon all the widows and orphans and slaves whose world I've just blown apart. I can feel the rising certainty that I've changed my future again, that I won't see my cozy little house in Megaton for a good long while now.

This morning Evergreen Mills was the starting point for half the raiding parties in the wastes, and this afternoon it's a reeking charnel house, but tomorrow it might be something else, something useful, and that's got to be worth the effort. I don't know how this will end, but I know now what I have to do next. I'm going to walk in there and tell those frightened slaves and women and children that I'm not going to hurt them, that they'll be OK. And then I'm going to decide what to do to take care of the survivors of this place. I'm going to figure out what they need to make it through today, and tomorrow, and then the day after that until I can see where I'm going and where this road ends. That might take a while, but to be honest, I've needed a project anyway. I feel the weight of responsibility settle down on my shoulders again, and I think that maybe part of me has missed this. The shadows of black wings wheel above as the afternoon sun beats down on the newly-dead, and I turn, and I walk back alone towards the yawning gate.


	2. Chapter 2

What do you get when you free a hundred former slaves, prostitutes, prisoners, and children; mostly female, mostly rape victims? A lot of noise and an immediate pain in the neck, that's what. Right now I've got the volume dialed down on the external sensors built into my T-51B, but the noise of a several dozen sobbing women, babbling men, and hysterical children is still about to drive me over the edge. Finally I up the volume on my external speakers to an ear-shattering pitch.  
>"Shut up!" I yell. They shut up, mostly. A few cower down, hands over ears.<br>I dial the volume back down to something they can all stand and wait a second while the system catches up.

"Listen up, please. I know everyone's confused, but let me tell you as much as I can about what's going on. My name is Cheshire Vandy. You can all call me 'Ches.'"  
>I can see now that I'm looking at two distinct groups of people. The ones clustered around me or cowering in the corners look skinny, ragged, and traumatized. They're mostly naked, or the next thing to it. The ones grouping together on the other side of the entry hall are wearing more clothes and look a lot better fed. There's an assortment of ad hoc slave collars on display here and there among both groups, but from what I can see they're a lot more common on the skinny ones. Here and there are small, crying bundles, and scrawny, ragged children cowering behind adults or hiding in corners. Almost all of the adults are women, but there are a few men here and there, all collared, all young, most pretty. Based on what I'm seeing, it looks like a good quarter of the women are pregnant. There's blood on almost everyone; clothes, faces, hands. A few of them are holding pipes, tableware, or other makeshift weapons. I'm not sure who they expect to attack, but I'm not much worried about anything they're holding. Ever seen a raider with a lead pipe go after a Brotherhood knight? It happens a lot, and it's almost comical, like an ant attacking a sealed can of beans. Half the time the knights don't even bother to shoot, they just smack the guy a couple of times and move on to the real threats.<br>"Now, there's been a lot of shooting, so obviously you want to know what happened outside. I don't know how you all felt about the people who ran this place, but you should know that they're dead."  
>Gasps and moans all around, some shock, some horror, some somewhere in between. I pick out a few that look more upset than the others. I keep my eyes on them and go on.<br>"You're probably aware that this place doesn't have the best reputation in the Capitol Wasteland. Word is that it's a cesspit of raiders, slavers, and marauders. Obviously that's a little less accurate today than it was yesterday. I didn't come here to clean it out, but things got a little more complicated than I planned."

I can feel I'm drifting off of the point. Public speaking isn't my forte. Usually I stick to stuff I'm good at, like fixing machines, and killing things. The well fed huddle has moved from silent staring to mutters and glares. The scared ones are still cowering, but I'm seeing more eyes now and fewer huddled backs and hunched shoulders. Here and there, though, I'm starting to notice a third group. A few, mostly older, are starting to walk around the room, checking for injuries and helping people to their feet. A woman in a headscarf who looks to be in her late 30's is looking at me with an expression I can only interpret as speculative. She's a little better dressed, in a patched leather jacket and a short skirt but she's wearing a collar, and the front of her dress is covered in blood. That would put her in with the unfriendly bunch that I've just mentally labeled Group Two, but there's no hostility at all in her expression, and maybe even a little hope around the edges. I'm out of my element, I don't know the political geography of this place. I need an ally, and she might do. I point at her.  
>"Ma'am, would you tell me your name?"<br>She does the "who me?" doubletake, then she takes a step forward.  
>"I'm Myra." She says.<br>"Myra, what do - what did you do here?" I ask.  
>She pauses, looks around.<br>"I'm the medic." She says. That fits with the big square satchel she has slung across her back. A skill like that would make her valuable, which is why she's obviously being treated better than most, but that slave collar tells me that she probably wasn't a friend to previous management. She'll do, for now.

"Myra, I think I passed an area with tables on one of the upper levels. Do you think we can fit everyone in there?"  
>"In the Hole?" she asks.<br>"The what?" I say.  
>She clarifies. "The masters called that "The Drinking Hole. 'Hole,' for short."<br>That makes sense, I think. Place like this would be built around a bar. I think I saw a couple of brass poles there too, and I've been around enough to know what those are used for. Of course, in a place like this they might have found some even nastier applications for them.  
>"Okay Myra, how about we get everyone up to the hole, then. Anyone that's hurt but can walk."<br>A thought occurs to me.  
>"Myra, is anyone too hurt to walk?"<br>She looks away for a minute, won't meet my eyes. "No," she says. I'm pretty sure there's more, so I wait. Around us, a rough circle has formed. The Group Twos are still separated, but they're looking at us too. After a couple of seconds, Myra speaks again.  
>"You were very thorough." Her lip twists. "Anyone you shot is already dead, or will be soon."<br>It feels like there's more she's not saying, but a this point I'm losing momentum, and I need to get this bunch somewhere contained so I can figure out what to do. It's not surprising, I guess. I've been killing a long time, and even without the suit I've gotten very good at it. In the suit, it's almost too easy, and in the last six months I've fought raiders and slavers and deathclaws and supermutants and power-armored Enclave troops, so a building full of sleepy, drugged-out, panicked raiders was a walk in the park, relatively speaking. 

Group Two looks like it's going to give me a problem, but then a bony blonde with hard eyes says something low and fast, and they all start moving. They move together as a group, some watching the others around them, some watching me. I can see they're going to be trouble. The T-51B has a 30 minute running security loop, both audio and video. I tell it to save the last 20 seconds of data for playback later. I'm going to want to know what she said. She turns to face me as she reaches the top of a ramp, and I snap a digital image, file that away too. I need to start organizing what I know about this place, so I shoot an image of Myra too, and start a new file for her. I don't know why the old US Army had these features built into each harness of power armor. The functionality is filed under "intelligence" in the "urban operations" submenu. I know what the words mean, but I've never been able to figure out the connection among them. Just one more thing lost when the bombs fell. Maybe the army had policing duties as well, during those last, mad years before the end, although that doesn't match up to what they taught me in the vault. It wouldn't be the first time that's happened. Apparently Vault-Tec was more interested in indoctrination than in education. 

It takes a good ten minutes to get everyone up the stairs and and into the Hole. They wind up standing in careful circles around the picnic tables, eyes down on the ground. Nobody's sitting, and I realize that they probably weren't allowed to sit in here. You don't need to sit to wait tables, or spin around on a pole, or any of the other things a raider would have wanted from a slave in a place like this. A woman dressed in the remains of a maid outfit is huddled up in the corner, rocking back and forth weeping quietly. I see Myra and one of the young men walk over to her. He puts a hand on her back, rubbing it in slow, circular motions while his mouth makes comforting sounds. Myra walks over to me, her lips compressed into a straight line.  
>"Sir - Ches, I mean. Might we move Helen somewhere else? Her master... wasn't good to her in here."<br>I had been wondering about the maid outfit. Sounds like her "owner" was an even sicker puppy than the rest of the former denizens of this place.  
>"Yeah," I say, "but send the guy with her. I need you here with me." She nods, turns to go.<br>"Myra?" I say. She turns back. I turn the volume down so low she has to lean in to hear me. "Keep it under your hat, but it's *Miss,* not "Sir."  
>Her eyes widen for a second, and the speculative look comes back. She looks around and lowers her voice too.<br>"That's a good idea, I think. Most of the women here are used to following orders from men. As long as they don't know you're... not, they'll probably behave better.  
>I nod. A human in power armor looks and sounds about the same from the outside regardless of who's on the inside, and my instincts have been telling me to keep quiet about my gender. In the meantime, I need more information. I touch her on the shoulder, carefully, and turn my head toward Group Two, who are in a tight huddle now, whispering.<br>"Myra, who are they, and why are they being so careful to stay away from the others?"  
>Her lips thin out again, and her voice drops a few degrees.<br>"They're 'Trustys,'" she says. I've never heard the term, and I let her know it.  
>"Some of them had important jobs, some of them had a regular thing going with one of the guys. If they could trust you not to run or turn on them, they made you a Trusty. Better food, better treatment." She smiles, thinly.<br>"And now they're worried that you're going to want revenge, huh?" I ask  
>"Probably," she agrees.<br>"Who's the tall blonde one?" I ask.  
>"That's Barbara. She had a thing with Scar, the most recent bossman of this place. She wasn't the only one, but she was a regular. She also used to help Master Jack over at the store."<br>Her eyes widen.  
>"Did you find mas- Smiling Jack? He's a trader up at the bazaar."<br>An image floats dimly up from my recent memory. I can recall ducking into a room lined with shelves just long enough to double-tap a guy with a handlebar moustache and a weird-looking shotgun.  
>"I think I did. Friend of yours?"<br>She shivers. "No."  
>"Good," I say, "because I don't think I left much of him."<br>The slaves are all still lined up in that weird passive stance, hands folded together, eyes on the ground. Even the Group Twos are doing it now.  
>"Myra, is there a way we can keep everyone contained for a few hours while I police up all the weapons and check for holdouts?"<br>She gives me a hard look. "You want to lock us back up?" She asks.  
>"Not all of you. But Blondie and her friends over there are making me nervous, and I don't trust the mental state of the rest of your... colleagues. This has got to be nerve-wracking for them, and with what they've been through..."<br>She thinks about it for a minute. Finally, she seems to come to a decision. She looks me in the eye, or tries to.  
>"You promise to let us all back out?" she asks.<br>"I don't want to lock _you_ up at all" I say. "Can't you and a couple of the others stay outside to keep them calm?"  
>She nods her head. "I can pick out a few to help me keep order." <p>

It takes about ten minutes to get them all grouped up and into the cells at the back of the Hole. In there I find a few more slaves. They're a mixed bag. A couple are well-fed and have the hard eyes of professional prostitutes. One is shivering, dirty, and incoherent. A hand-lettered sign over the door to the holding area reads "Nobody fucks anyone without Scar's permission. This means YOU!"  
>"Charming," I remark. Myra looks up, and nods grimly. She pics out a couple of people from the group. I notice that the young man who helped Myra with Helen, the catatonic maid, is one of the ones chosen to help. They form a quick huddle, Myra in the middle, and then they're all busy for the next couple of minutes, sorting people into various cells. It's a tight fit.<br>"Alright, everyone, I'm going to go take care of a few things, but I'll be back soon and we'll see about getting those collars off."  
>Some look hopeful at that, but some of the slaves start weeping or shouting. I can hear a lot of cries of "No" and see a lot of heads shaking, and here and there someone clutches at their collar. Myra looks pained, and I realize that was the wrong thing to say.<br>"Don't worry, you can keep them if you want to." I add, lamely. It seems to have the desired effect, though, as the hysterics subside.  
>Now they're in their cells, the clock's ticking, and I've got to move.<br>"I'll be back in an hour to check on you," I tell Myra.  
>"They should be okay that long," she says. "But don't forget your promise."<br>"I've never owned a slave, and I don't plan to start now. Especially not wholesale." I say.  
>She seems satisfied enough with that. I hope she doesn't realize that I still have no idea what I'm going to do with these people.<p> 


	3. Chapter 3

Once outside, I start with the weapons. I spot an old tarp in one of the emptied slave pens. I have to pass by the first man I shot today to get there, and as I do, I notice he's still got that combat knife in his hand, and his eyes are wide open, staring up into the sky. The courtyard looks different now; the sun is starting to drop down to the west, the shadows lengthening into new shapes. I shake the tarp out a few times, leaving a grimy cloud to drift away through the air.

There's a reinforced grommet on each corner of the tarp, so I clip the two nearest corners onto the carabiners I usually use to secure my pack to either side of my steel chassis. That makes it trail behind me in the dust like an ugly oversized cape, but it leaves my arms free to work. I walk over to the northeast corner of the courtyard, pick a point on one of the boxcars to use as a reference, and start walking my grid. I've done this a hundred times after a firefight. It takes a while, but it's the only way to be sure I get everything of value: every brass casing, every dropped weapon, every fumbled stimpack or discarded jet canister. Out here, everything that isn't rock, dirt, or sand has value, and almost everything I pick up goes on the tarp. I prioritize weapons and ammo, of course, but I keep an eye out for food as well. There are a lot of hungry mouths inside. Most of what I find comes off of the corpses, but there's a lot just lying around as well, some of it dropped in the firefight, some discarded days or, by the look of it, months before. They were a wasteful bunch, these raiders.

I finish my first pass, turn, walk ten yards west, and head back north again. I pick a spot on the wall of the building as my reference this time. More bodies, more gear. I don't care what anyone says, there's no dignity in violent death. Bodies lie as they fall, some curled in their last agony around a wound, others flopped obscenely into contorted shapes, limbs lying wherever they fell as the life fled their bodies, shapes broken and inhuman in their jointless sprawl. Sometimes their clothes are torn away from their bodies, revealing pale skin and body hair beneath. The dead are shameless, their eyes open in unblinking stares as flies crawl across them and down into their noses and mouths. The wasteland is a hard place, and even the insects have learned to be supremely efficient. I know that the larger scavengers are already gathering out of sight, mole rats and radscorpions and yao guai and feral dogs. They'll be here tonight to feast, and that's not a pleasant sound to fall asleep to.

I make my second turn, then a third, and a fourth, methodically working my way across the sun baked parking lot, I don't go any further than the line of abandoned railcars. I know I didn't engage anyone past there. By the time I'm done, the tarp is covered with four or five hundred pounds of weapons, ammo, and gear. I'd never be able to drag this alone, but the suit barely notices the extra weight. I leave the armor on the bodies - nothing worth taking here, and I wouldn't want any of it next to my skin. Call me squeamish, if you like. I make my way back into the slave pens. The chain-link enclosures have gates that lock, and a canvas rainfly stretched overhead. I want to keep scavengers, animal and otherwise, away from my loot.

I spot another tarp I should be able to use, so instead of dumping my finds into the dirt, I just reach back and unhook the grommets from the carabiners and let the edge of the tarp fall where it is. I hook up the second tarp and start over, but this time I don't bother with the grid. I walk in zigzags from body to body, hydraulic actuators whining as I lift bodies and toss them onto the tarp. Most I grab by a their clothing or armor, but sometimes it's easier to grab a leg or an arm. They flop awkwardly, and they're slimy with congealing blood and effluvia. Once in a while I drop one. I don't worry about it too much, they're not in any condition to care. I drag them, five or ten at a time, out past the boxcars and partway down the old railroad cut, piling them in a pale and sprawling heap. In the shadow of a railcar, I find a raider who's still clinging to life. She's got a hole the size of an orange to the right of her spine, and I can see the shocking white where the ribs burst apart when the bullet blasted its way out of her back. She's still breathing, fast and shallow, with each exhalation a few more bright red beads trickle sluggishly down the wide smear of blood on her back as her torn lungs leak arterial blood. I doubt she's conscious, but just in case I bring an armored boot down on the back of her skull before I pick her up. There's a complicated multipart crunching sound, and her legs jerk spastically, once. She stops breathing. I grab her by the ankle and toss her on the tarp.

After an hour I've dragged every body I can find out to the heap. I leave the behemoth where it lies - there's no way I can move that, even with my armor. I start on the interior of the building, repeating the process, first for guns and gear, then for bodies again. It's dark inside, and my pipboy light only illuminates a small patch around me. There aren't many bodies in here - most of the raiders were out in the yard trying to bring down the behemoth. I find the slave quarters, a mess of torn, filthy bedding and scraps of clothing. Here and there, a teddy bear lies among utensils and clothes and assorted junk, the prized few possessions of those who have almost nothing. It takes another hour to finish my grim chore, but it gives me time to think. I've gotten myself in over my head, here. My first impulse is to radio in to the citadel, ask Sarah or the Elder for help, but I know they're stretched thin, and they won't be able to spare the men or supplies for an outpost, not this far out from the DC ruins. Some of my friends in Megaton, Big Town, or Rivet City might try to help, but they just don't have the resources or manpower, and the logistics of moving them this far are unworkable. I'm on my own out here, and I've been in this suit for four days already. I need to get out and get a bath, clean my gear, or I'm going to start to get sores and infections from living encased in sweat and grime and the leakage from the built-in waste management systems that are never quite up to the task completely. In Rivet City or Megaton, that might not matter too much, but out here an infection means a good chance of death, or incapacitation at the least, and I can't afford that, not surrounded by people I don't trust.

And that, I realize, is the core of the problem. I need to find some people I can trust to watch my back while I sleep, and eat, and maintain my gear. I've made a point of avoiding that so far - I've met some good people out here, but most of them they can't go where I go, do what I do. They're liabilities, or worse, targets. Only Star Paladin Cross could keep up for long, and with the Enclave on the run and the Brotherhood gearing up to assault the mutie stronghold at Vault 87, she's got other priorities now. She'd come if I called, but she couldn't stay, and I'd be back where I started soon enough. I've never been good with people, never good at asking for help. Back in the vault growing up, Amata was my only friend, and even then it was always deeply, painfully one-sided, and I don't think it left me with a normal outlook on relationships. I don't like my options, but I'm coming to realize that the only solution to this, at least in the short term, is to trust somebody here. Myra is the obvious choice, and if I'm lucky, her friends will be reliable allies as well. I make one last, long detour, past the pile of bodies, up the rocky slope, and back to the flat rock where my DKS 501 sniper rifle is still lying, gleaming in the fading orange light. I pick it up, break it down, and stuff it back in my pack. I clip the straps back on, and make my way back down to the slope where I climbed up. I stop at the pile of bodies again. I should burn them, for the sake of hygiene and to keep scavengers away. One of the raiders had a flamethrower that would probably do the trick, but I didn't think to bring it with me. I'll do it tomorrow - Myra and her little makeshift cadre are probably pretty anxious by now.

The sun is down, and the interior is even darker and more shadowed than before as I make my way upstairs to the Hole. Myra is standing by the entrance to the cells, looking worried and angry. I've been gone longer than I said I would, and I can see she wants to give me a piece of her mind. I hold up a hand and she hesitates. I know she's seen me do a lot of killing today, and I can see fear and indignation having an ugly argument behind her eyes. If I'm going to make this work, I'm going to have to stop being a steel god for a while and let her know where we stand. Hand still in the air, I reach back behind my head and pop the tension latch on the outer environment seal. The helmet shifts just a bit, and, using the latch like a handle, I slide the steel ring around to the right till it's just to the right of my chin. I repeat the process on the left, and as the inner seal pops free the HUD in the helmet goes dark. It's just a big block of steel now, and I pull it off and let it slide down my back to hang on the retention straps. As my head comes free of the helmet, the smell of unwashed bodies, filth, and spilled beer is overpowering. I catch sight of Myra's face in the gloom and make eye contact. She's staring at me, mouth slightly open. For a moment, neither of us speaks.

Eventually, she breaks the silence. "Nice to meet you," she says, and smiles. Nervously, I think.I can understand how she feels - we're starting over now; I've got a new face, a human face, and now I'm a person, like her, and she and I have to figure out what that means to us, to what we say, and how we say it.

"I'm sorry that took so long," I say.

She nods. "What were you doing out there?" she asks.

"Cleanup," I say. I can tell she knows what I mean because her eyes lose focus for a second and she looks faintly revolted. After a second or two, her features shift, and she looks thoughtful instead.

"You cleaned up all of it?" she asks.

"Couldn't get the Behemoth," I say. "I'll burn it in place tomorrow. But the rest of the bodies are piled up out by the entrance to the cut. That should be far enough away to keep the radscorpions and such away from us."

She thinks about that for a minute, then nods curtly. "I've been thinking," she begins.  
>I wait to see what she has to say. "I figure the best thing for everyone is to stick to routine until we have a chance to figure out what we're going to do with them."<p>

I notice that it's already "we." She's appointed herself to my committee of one. This woman has an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, it seems, and no shortage of assertiveness. I'm not complaining - I feel a little less alone already now that I'm not the only one making decisions. I nod, but she's already talking again.

"I want to have them go back to their quarters and bed down." She pauses. "Are they... clean?"  
>Her voice hardly shakes. I nod.<p>

"They're clean enough. No bodies, but there might be a few blood spots here and there."

"Alright," she says. "I'll grab a couple of the sturdier slaves and we'll go clean up. No sense in scaring the children." She doesn't stumble or hesitate over the word "slave." It's just a fact of life, here, the edges worn off the word by constant use.

She rounds up three or four of her cadre, and they march off to do battle with mops and buckets. She leaves the young man who helped her with Helen earlier to keep watch. On the way out, she points at the wall, and one of her helpers, a young woman with dark skin and tight-cropped wiry hair, goes over and flicks a heavy switch. One at a time, lights blink on around the cavernous hall. The bulbs are an eclectic mix, strung around the chamber, hanging from long-dead ceiling fans and dead light fixtures, dangling on cables from the rafters. Pre war extension cords snake everywhere, bright orange and dull brown and black and grey. The colors are cacophonous in their disharmony. Bare light bulbs, small colored lights, a few long rectangular fluorescents like we had in the vault. The effect is mesmerising, and I've had a long day. I sit down on a steel crate by the bar to look around. Chairs and power armor don't mix well.

I can see the young man is looking at me. He's sitting at one of the tables, holding a half empty bottle of beer. I can tell he didn't expect a woman, but he's taking it well. He sees me looking, and looks away. I take a deep breath.

"Hey," I say. He looks up.

"C'mere a minute," I say.

He walks over, still holding the beer. There's something defiant in the gesture, and I think that maybe he wasn't allowed alcohol as a slave. That would make sense. Why waste valuable booze on a possession? He stops a couple of yards away, looks at me silently.

"What's your name?" I ask.

He seems to think about it. "Jason," he says, and looks away again. His voice rises at the end of the word, like a question.

I make an effort, force my features into a smile. "Are you sure?" I ask. He doesn't seem to think it's funny.

"Yes," he says. He looks up after a second, and I see green eyes flash under dark lashes.

"Cheshire," I say. "Cheshire Vandy. You can call me Ches."

He blinks, and his eyes lose focus for a moment.

"Ring a bell?" I ask.

He nods slowly, eyes narrowed in thought. His gaze passes over my face, slides down my shoulder to the blue "101" stencilled above the Lyon's Pride insignia. His eyes pop open, and he locks gazes with me. His green eyes seem huge in the dim light.

"One-oh-one," he breathes.

I nod. "Three-dog fan, are you?" I ask. _Here it comes_, I think. The reason that a year out of the vault I still don't have any real friends surface side. Goddamn Three-dog and his fucking 101-for-sainthood radio campaign. Everywhere I go, people I've never met fawn and pant all over me like drooling puppies. It's awful. I haven't had a decent conversation in six months. I don't have friends, I have fucking fans, and it's the loneliest feeling in the world. I've just met this guy, and now I know he's going to gush about how much he admires me, how important I...

His face goes cold, like iron. "Fuck you," he says, and turns, and walks away.

For a frozen moment I'm shocked, but somewhere deep down inside me something seems to stir, to wake up. _That's new_, I think. I feel my heartbeat accelerate, just a touch.

"The fuck," I ask, "is your problem?"

He doesn't turn around, just keeps walking until he disappears into a passage, out of my sight. I spend a couple of minutes watching, but he doesn't appear. After twenty minutes or so, Myra comes back. She looks around. "Where's Jason?" she asks. I nod my head toward the passage. She stares in that direction for a second, looking puzzled, then turns her attention back to me.

"Nice and pretty?" I ask. She looks confused. I clarify. "The slave quarters. Did you make them nice and pretty?"

She grimaces. "Nice enough," she says. "Should we get them moving?"

I nod, and climb heavily to my feet. She's looking at me. "What?" I ask.

"You might want to put your helmet back on," she says.

_Right_, I think. _Gotta keep them thinking I'm a man._ I reseal the helmet, and Myra leads the way back into the alcove where the cells are. Her helpers spread out, unlocking cell doors. Myra raises her voice.

"Alright everybody, time to bunk down. Everyone to your quarters. C'mon, we've all done this before. Tomorrow will come soon enough, but for now we all need to get some sleep."

Out of their cells they come, dirty, ragged, children bundled in their arms or tagging along in their wake, little hands clutching at their mothers' hands and shirttails and ragged hemlines. One of those infants must be the girl I came here for, and I make a mental note to ask Myra when I get a chance. The mothers and children are numerous, but they're a minority sprinkled among hard-eyed whores and quivering waitresses and ragged men and women with the hollow eyes and zombie walk of victims of habitual, violent parade seems to go on for minutes. I trigger the "Force Estimate" subroutine, and it spits out a number.

Ninety-eight.

That's how many lives I'm responsible for now. More really, if you count Myra and her friends. Somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred-five, a hundred-seven, I figure. Women, children, nursing mothers. Battered, broken, scared, and helpless. I'm all they've got. It's terrifying. Being a saviour is nothing new to me. But before I could always just walk away afterwards, let them get back to their lives with a new story to tell while I walk the dusty wastes, alone with myself. This time, I'm stuck. I feel the burden of responsibility again, I feel it crushing down on my heart like a suffocating weight.

The ragged column passes, and I attach myself to the rear, follow them up and down flights of stairs until they're all packed back into the tight airless space of the quarters. It looks awful, humans mashed together like a can of pre-war sardines I once opened. The thought distracts me for a moment. I remember wondering what lunatic would actually eat those things. I live in a radioactive wasteland where men and women kill every day for a gulp of water or a bite of irradiated food, and I can't even imagine trying to choke down one of those slimy rotten things.

Myra is on her way over to me. "I'm going to stay here tonight," she says.

I look over at Barbara and the rest of Group Two. They've got their own corner, cordoned off with old filing cabinets and hospital screens. She's looking at me, and so is the brawny dark-haired woman next to her. I speak without looking back at Myra. "You sure?" I ask. She follows my gaze. I can see her nod out of the corner of my eye. "We'll set a watch," she says. She pauses, lingering. I turn my attention to her.

"There's a lock on the door of Smiling Jack's," she volunteers. "Maybe you could bed down in there?"

In a flash, I remember a workbench there as well. Worth a look. "Thanks," I say.

She stops, looks me dead in the eye. "No," she says. "Thank you." She holds eye contact for another second, then turns away. So do I. Under the helmet, my face feels hot. I do a quick scan for Jason, but I don't see him anywhere. Between him and Barbara and her crew, I'm definitely finding someplace to sleep that has a lock on it.

I head up to the second floor, where I retrace my steps until I spot a hand-lettered sign that reads "Smiling Jacks." There are a pair of playing cards nailed to the sign. Oddly, neither is a jack. Go figure. The workbench is a disappointment. There's a set of socket wrenches, a couple of hammers, and some scraps of metal and electronics, but nothing like the kind of gear I need to make a meaningful attempt at maintenance. I'll have to settle for stripping out of my gear and giving it a good wipe down on the interior. There's a sink that works, by god, and a good pile of rags in the back. I double check the door before I start the process of removing the armor. Helmet first, double seals sliding around to my chin, as before. The next step is to lock the servos in the legs and torso for high-tension latches on each side of my chestplate are more of a challenge to put on than to take off - actuator enhanced strength makes short work of them, and the front plate slides away with a hiss of escaping air. The same thing happens as I trigger the latches for the forearms, and then the upper arm/shoulder assembly. Each section of the armor is pressurized separately. I have no idea why. The reference file on the subject refers to "Zero-G operations," whatever those might have been. I leave the cables and pistons of the torso locked, and simply lean down out of the backplate to release the vertical tension straps holding my legs into the armored greave and boot assembly. It's a struggle, but by wiggling my legs, pointing my toes, and holding on to the torso latches with my arms for leverage I manage to extricate my legs and lower myself to the floor. After the better part of five days in the suit, my balance is shot, and so is my muscle tension. Whatever it looks like from the outside, you don't actually _stand_ in power armor. You hang, suspended by straps and braces and cables, while the suit interprets your movements and walks and moves and fights for you. The system works so well that you tend to forget that you're not walking until you try to afterwards.

Free of the suit, I slide down awkwardly into a sitting position and stretch my legs out in front of me, trying to rub some feeling back into them. After a while, I get up, unsteadily, and start unzipping my underarmor. It's amazing how many people fail to realize that the "recon armor" found in military caches is actually designed to fit underneath power armor. Those funny lumps and protrusions mate seamlessly with the internal control systems of the T-51B. By the time the old USA got around to designing T-51D, they'd made it optional, but wearing a harness of T-51B without underarmor is a recipe for bruises, sores, and broken bones.

The worst part is yet to come, of course. Getting all the tubes out of me is a messy uncomfortable process, but it beats the hell out of the alternative. Struggling my way out of this steel cocoon every time I have to answer a call of nature is impractical in the extreme, and the alternative just doesn't bear thinking about. In the end, I'm standing naked, cooling sweat all over my body, smelling like something long dead. My legs are quivering from the unaccustomed strain of supporting my weight for the first time in a week, so I drop and knock out half a dozen push-ups and a hundred sit ups to try to get my muscles back into the right frame of mind. Then, shaking and exhausted, I have just enough energy left to use the sink to soap up and rinse down. The effort leaves me slightly out of breath. Crossing back to my semi-disassembled armor, I twist two tabs into alignment underneath the fusion pack housing on the back of the chassis. A little cargo compartment pops open, just big enough for a few of life's little luxuries - a toothbrush and scavenged pre-war paste, and a pair of leopard-print PJs I found, of all places, in a safe deep in the tunnels of the old metro system. I'm changed and washed and sleepy as hell, and I figure just this once I'll leave cleaning my gear for the morning. It'll be harder work then, and leaving your gear dirty is always a risk, but I'm exhausted. I'm not an idiot, though. I prime a pair of frag mines and prop them against a couple of cinderblocks so their sensor cones and shaped charges are pointed directly at the door. Even if someone gets by them, the warning beeps when their motion sensors get tripped should wake me up, and warn them off if they're not looking for trouble.

Pulling a blanket and a camping pillow from the pack hanging from the clips on my powered-down armor, I cross to the bed, strip the sheets off and do a quick check for bugs and other surprises. I don't see anything obvious, so I toss the pillow and the blanket onto the bed. I cross back to the armor, pull the .223 pistol from the homemade steel-and-leather holster I welded to the lateral thigh plate on the right leg, and walk back to tuck it under the pillow. At last, I clamber onto the bare mattress, pull the blanket up around me, and I'm asleep the moment my head hits the pillow.


End file.
